While many hosted CRM solutions are throwing on the functions, Salesnet today announced a slimmer, trimmer version of its standard CRM suite, aimed at small businesses.
"We turned off some of the functions that small businesses simply do not need, like those dealing with sharing rights and other functions that companies that run from one location do not utilize," says Dan Starr, chief marketing officer at Salesnet. "This simply makes the product quicker to configure and deploy for smaller businesses looking to get into CRM."
The product is delivered in a five or 10-user price package, Starr says. Salesnet Express Ten User Edition is priced at $1,795 (equivalent to $14.95 per user per month) and Salesnet Express Five User Edition goes for $1,195 (equivalent to $19.95 per user per month). "It's literally a fraction of the cost of some of the other hosted CRM solutions," Starr says, noting that companies can quickly migrate to Salesnet's Standard CRM suite once their needs exceed 10 users.
One of the new functions included in the Express version of Salesnet is a business process builder, which Starr calls the special sauce of the suite. "The workflow and process builders can create process templates that the whole company can follow, and it also makes training new hires easier, since they can jump right into certain business functions if they are automated."
"We are currently expanding beyond our key target markets and needed a solution that could integrate our sales processes and help us easily and quickly ramp up new inside sales team members," James Waddell, CEO of Formare Technica Ltd, a provider of construction design, management and technology consulting services, said in a Salesnet release. "I selected Salesnet Express because it's the only CRM solution that could do this for us."
According to a recent Gartner Dataquest survey, small businesses are predominantly buying sales modules, and very few small businesses are buying whole CRM suites. Thus, Starr says that Salesnet Express focuses on the growth engine of a business: sales. In addition to providing sales functionality, Salesnet Express enables small businesses to easily capture, track, and follow up on customer interactions while offering the marketing capabilities needed to maintain consistent outreach depending on where contacts are within the sales process, Starr explains.